Una mirada histórica sobre los estudios de redes

• Autores: Horacio Capel Sáez
• Localización: Geotrópico, ISSN-e 1692-0791, Vol. 1, Nº. 1, 2003, págs. 30-65
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Dialnet Métricas: 12 Citas
• Resumen

  • Studies on city networks and urban hierarchies had been gaining increasing maturity throughout the first half of the 20th century, up to the 70s. This was true in geography as well as in other fields as economics and urban sociology. Christaller's 1933 contribution on central place theory was a breakthrough in support of these studies. His views were influential during the 1940s and played a definite role in advancing quantitative geography the following decade. Research on urban networks was particularly interesting from the stand point of regionalization considering the relationship between city systems and regional organization. The evolving process of those studies and the adding of new dimensions, such as the use of the urban system concept of the 1960s, are examined in this article. The essay is also concerned with examining a whole new set of problems and research approaches, which closely induced changes in geographic theory and methodology since those years. The organization of city networks themselves, urban hierarchy and areas of city influence have been altogether transformed, along with the changing significance of proximity and economic and social changes as well. The development of such new phenomena as multinuclear urban structures, megalopolises, metropolitan galaxies, the city-region, megacities or hypercities, all make it viable to think of a universal Pantopolis or ecumenopolis. It is an entirely logical outcome of current urban transformations that studies dealing with city networks should be reconsidered. New reality is being constructed. And new research themes are necessarily becoming the scholars' concern.